Stephen Hawking’s Explosive New Theory

in Physics, Science | June 27th, 2008

Arti­cle begins: “Prof Stephen Hawk­ing has come up with a new idea to explain why the Big Bang of cre­ation led to the vast cos­mos that we can see today. Astronomers can deduce that the ear­ly uni­verse expand­ed at a mind-bog­gling rate because regions sep­a­rat­ed by vast dis­tances have sim­i­lar back­ground tem­per­a­tures. They have pro­posed a process of rapid expan­sion of neigh­bour­ing regions, with sim­i­lar cos­mic prop­er­ties, to explain this growth spurt which they call infla­tion. But that left a deep­er mys­tery: why did infla­tion occur in the first place?” The rest here.

No Ice at the North Pole

in Science | June 26th, 2008

The chance of ice dis­ap­pear­ing this sum­mer? 50/50. Wor­ri­some, I’d say.

How’s This for a Book Trailer?

in Video - Arts & Culture, Web/Tech, YouTube | June 25th, 2008

A cou­ple weeks ago we talked about a new trend in the book pub­lish­ing world — cre­at­ing pro­mo­tion­al videos for new books and let­ting them go viral on YouTube and oth­er social video sites. Here’s one of the bet­ter exam­ples I’ve seen. 12 books by Lemo­ny Snick­et get pro­mot­ed at once. Lots of bang for the mar­ket­ing buck:

via JermiahTolbert.com

The Candid Side of George Carlin

in Comedy | June 24th, 2008

A quick find … I want­ed to flag a good inter­view with George Car­lin where he talks can­did­ly about his evo­lu­tion as a com­ic and the strange tra­jec­to­ry of his career. The con­ver­sa­tion was held at the 92nd Street Y in New York. You can down­load it here: iTunes — Feed — MP3 — Blog Post.

Also see the 92nd Street Y’s col­lec­tion on iTunes here, which we men­tioned in our ear­li­er post today.

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RIP: George Carlin on the Tonight Show (1966)

in Comedy | June 23rd, 2008

Here’s the obit. And here’s Car­lin with John­ny Car­son over 40 years ago, sport­ing a very dif­fer­ent look. Rather remark­able to look at.

Also worth a look is his famous piece: Sev­en Dirty Words You Can’t Hear on TV because it formed the basis for a first amend­ment case that went to the US Supreme Court in the 1970s. Obvi­ous­ly, giv­en the very nature of the con­tent and case, you should know in advance that the video is not exact­ly “fam­i­ly-friend­ly” video.

The Grey Video: Mixing The Beatles with Jay‑Z

in Uncategorized | June 20th, 2008

In 2004, Dan­ger Mouse released The Grey Album which lay­ered the rap­per Jay-Z’s The Black Album on top of The Bea­t­les’ White Album. Black and white makes grey.

Now, on YouTube, you can find The Grey Video, which exper­i­men­tal­ly brings Dan­ger Mouse’s con­cept to video. The video, cre­at­ed by two Swiss direc­tors, mesh­es clips from The Bea­t­les’ film A Hard Day’s Night with footage of Jay‑Z per­form­ing. Watch it below, and get more info on The Grey Album here. Also check our col­lec­tion of MP3 Music Blogs.

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What’s Wrong With What We Eat?

in Random | June 11th, 2008

Appear­ing at the TED Con­fer­ence, New York Times food writer Mark Bittman sums up “what’s wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too lit­tle home cook­ing), and why it’s putting the entire plan­et at risk.” As you may notice, some of Bittman’s com­ments echo the think­ing in Michael Pol­lan’s recent work. (The clip has been added to our YouTube playlist.)

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Classic Photographs Remade Lego Style

in Art | June 10th, 2008

Take some of the most impor­tant pho­tographs of the 20th cen­tu­ry, then remake them with Legos, and here’s what you get. You get Robert Capa’s 1944 pho­to­graph of the D‑Day inva­sion, look­ing some­thing like this: (see below). The famous Lunch Atop a Sky­scraper pho­to sud­den­ly looks like this. The image of Roger Ban­nis­ter break­ing the four-minute mile becomes that. And Buzz Aldrin walk­ing on the Moon takes on this look. The full col­lec­tion is here. Thanks to Chop­per Bob for the laugh on this one.

via WWdN: In Exile

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Viral Video: The New Way to Market Books

in Books, YouTube | June 10th, 2008

Over the week­end, The Wall Street Jour­nal took a look at an emerg­ing trend in the pub­lish­ing world — using viral videos to pro­mote new books. The strat­e­gy, which has­n’t yet gen­er­at­ed much in the way of sales, is being used to mar­ket books by estab­lished authors (take Jodi Picoult’s 19 Min­utes for exam­ple) and new authors as well. One video not men­tioned in WSJ’s piece is the fair­ly slick clip that pro­motes Toby Barlow’s début nov­el Sharp Teeth. Bar­low, when not writ­ing, is the cre­ative direc­tor of a large adver­tis­ing agency. Hence per­haps the will­ing­ness to take this approach:

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Steve Jobs’ iPhone Spiel in 60 Seconds

in Apple, Web/Tech | June 10th, 2008

Things got a lit­tle nerdgas­mic yes­ter­day when Steve Jobs unveiled the new iPhone at WWDC. Although the pitch last­ed 107 min­utes, the high­lights have been boiled down to a neat 60 sec­onds. In watch­ing the clip, here’s my sim­ple take away: When I bought an iPhone ear­li­er this spring, I appar­ent­ly paid two times too much for some­thing that’s two times too slow. Grazzi Steve.

Relat­ed Con­tent: The Iphone and The 21st Cen­tu­ry Uni­ver­si­ty